A Visit to Lady Lian
by bevesy
Summary: The palace costumer is visited by her long time customers, Ursa and Azula.


Ursa seems anxious this evening. It isn't a terrible kind. It's just jittery with a sprinkle of madness and...almost _happy_.

The firelord's mother isn't well liked by the palace mongers. Two seconds near her is enough for any guard, servant, physician or noblemen to run. Even the firelord began losing his patience not too long after her arrival at the palace eight years ago. Ursa is just too high strung, especially since she became a grandmother for the first time.

Lian almost pricks her fingers when her daughter rushes in with her face pallid and sheened with sweat. The elderly woman adjusts her spectacles over the bridge of her nose.

Her daughter looks like she had to crawl through the oven-like steel mills at the foot of Capital City to get to her, "Speak, before I withdraw your pay for the next two months!"

"Geez mom, relax," Jiao dumps herself on the seat near her mother, who is hunched over eight yards of gleaming studded ruby. "It's her. She just arrived this morning."

So Lian forgets that her daughter is stumbling after her and tries not to rush to the dressing room. And it's not any dressing room, but the _royal_ dressing room, only reserved for their majesty and still the same for the past three decades. Throughout all her eighty-one years of life, she never expected for these two to come back here and sit in this very room. Together.

As she enters, the posture of the two visitors draws forth the silent image of a little girl burning her gowns and the girl's mother, forcing her to apologize to Lian in the gardens.

That toddler, once growing into a well-seasoned psychopath and now here, in the world's dreariest peasant shift disguised as an air robe is enough for Lian to wake up every morning with a refreshed air of confidence.

It's soothed and invigorated her dark and withered soul. Now every sunrise, Lian would thank Agni for his everlasting watch over her and live the rest of her life with a newfound purpose: to make Princess Azula's life miserable.

"Oh my, your majesty," Lian tries to curtsy as best as her dry knees would allow. She slaps Jiao's help away. "I almost didn't recognize you with those full blown cheeks."

The now heavier woman smirks. Of course it's her, "Lady Lian, what a surprise. I didn't expect you to become this old and wretched-"

"That's enough."

Ursa gently touches her daughter's arm with her free hand. Lian follows her occupied hand and notices the small bundle nestled over her chest with a bright cap. "Be happy that Lady Lian's still here. She's one of the few who still believed you'd turn around." _Scoff._ "Anyways, we'd like a wedding dress done for Princess Azula."

"Don't you mean former princess, my lady?"

"Mom, give it a rest! It's not like you were noble for long!" Jiao exclaims.

"That's because you introduced your father to your tutor!"

After Jiao rolls her eyes, Ursa asks, "How are your children, Jiao?"

"They're fine. Getting too big for their own good."

Lian ignores Ursa's fond gaze. Dealing with Ursa and her daughter is an uncomfortable experience. Their very presence brought forth a mixture of fond and terrible memories, all bundled in one.

Ursa is one of the few who knows why she is called the Fire Nation's best costumer. Lian built her reputation at a time when she had nothing but a three-year-old child on her hip.

Her husband had been a general flanked under Azulon. With him stationed most of the time in the Southern Water Tribe, she tried to ignore the rumors of him taking too much of a liking in violating the women there.

She lived the riches of any general's wife, but watched her husband parade his infidelity until he finally settled for her daughter's _less_ beautiful tutor and drove them out of the house with only the clothes on their backs. A short while later, he was discharged.

Illah had been the one who took her in, despite the fact that the former Firelady never used her services much. Ursa came along years later, a shy girl of sixteen, who often avoided her yet wore most of her greatest pieces, all under the order of Ozai.

Lian does not call Ursa a friend, but she knows things about the royal family that should be buried.

She knows why Ursa is paranoid about Kiyi being approached by suitors. She knows how Azula was conceived, which occurred during the dead of the night spent hurrying to finish Ursa's gown for Azulon's birth celebration the next morning while listening to Ursa's piercing screams.

She saw the jealousy within Ozai's gaze whenever he watched his only son with his mother. And though the idiotic old man claimed that he simply was disappointed in Zuko's lack of firebending prowess, Lian always knew deep down that Ozai simply envied the boy as he did Iroh.

Lian glances at the bundle and it does not take long for Ursa to notice.

"My grandson, Sonam, " Ursa says with a silent air of pride.

Lian smirks as she inches closer to the infant sleeping in a red. Scarlet red means luck in the Fire Nation, and Lian knows that though the child comes from a tragic family, he would rise above the ashes. "That's unfortunate, I always thought your daughter would grow up barren." Lian smiles at the boy's careless expression, his round chubby cheeks almost obscuring his lips and dark hair, soft and wispy over his head.

"He's a handsome little boy, for a demon's spawn-"

"He's a gift," Jiao corrects, eyeing her mother before squatting a little to stare at the baby closely.

"So you've heard?" Ursa asks.

"Of course," Lian says. "Meeting the first child of the Avatar should be an honor in itself. I never dreamt that I'd live to see another airbender one day. Things fly by." She then sneers at a scowling Azula. "You're very lucky. If I'd been the Avatar you'd be cooking in the Boiling Rock!"

Azula rolls her eyes.


End file.
